
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


The Government’s announcement that the seasonal worker visa scheme is being extended for five years has been welcomed by farming organisations. It comes as part of DEFRA's response to an independent review into Labour Shortages in the Food Supply Chain which was published last summer. Also in that response is a commitment to "turbo-charge" investment in automation with an extra 50 million pounds of funding for new technology for automating pack houses and to improve robotic pickers.
Jon Old’s family own around 16 hectares of watercress beds across Hampshire and Dorset. Their watercress ends up on the shelves of major supermarkets but since 2010, they’ve also been growing something else: wasabi. Wasabi is particularly difficult to grow - Jon calls it the the “Goldilocks Crop” because everything has to be just right!
And our whistle-stop tour of farming in the West of Europe with Cornish farmer and Farming Today journalist Stuart Oates concludes on the Coast of Portugal, where one of the crops he discovers is rice.
Presented by Caz Graham
By BBC Radio 44.5
5454 ratings
The Government’s announcement that the seasonal worker visa scheme is being extended for five years has been welcomed by farming organisations. It comes as part of DEFRA's response to an independent review into Labour Shortages in the Food Supply Chain which was published last summer. Also in that response is a commitment to "turbo-charge" investment in automation with an extra 50 million pounds of funding for new technology for automating pack houses and to improve robotic pickers.
Jon Old’s family own around 16 hectares of watercress beds across Hampshire and Dorset. Their watercress ends up on the shelves of major supermarkets but since 2010, they’ve also been growing something else: wasabi. Wasabi is particularly difficult to grow - Jon calls it the the “Goldilocks Crop” because everything has to be just right!
And our whistle-stop tour of farming in the West of Europe with Cornish farmer and Farming Today journalist Stuart Oates concludes on the Coast of Portugal, where one of the crops he discovers is rice.
Presented by Caz Graham

7,708 Listeners

391 Listeners

881 Listeners

1,040 Listeners

42 Listeners

5,541 Listeners

1,884 Listeners

607 Listeners

726 Listeners

1,827 Listeners

1,056 Listeners

284 Listeners

264 Listeners

245 Listeners

159 Listeners

106 Listeners

85 Listeners

148 Listeners

3,155 Listeners

15 Listeners

19 Listeners

1,636 Listeners

3,093 Listeners

54 Listeners

31 Listeners